Oscar could use a big hit

Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist

After this year's Academy Awards, the question was whether the Oscars were still relevant or if they were going the way of art galleries and modern dance, perceived as too elite and avant garde to appeal to the masses.

Documentary of slain Lexington Marine to be shown next week

Herald-Leader Staff Report

A documentary about Chase Comley, a Lexington Marine who was killed in Iraq in August 2005, will be shown at the Kentucky Theatre twice next week.

'Rachel Getting Married': Bother of the bride

By Lisa Kennedy The Denver Post

Sure, the title Rachel Getting Married sounds like Jonathan Demme's lovingly observed family drama will be about lovely Rachel Buchman's wedding. But if sister Kym could revise it, the film might be Kym Getting Even.

'Soul Men': Comic genius in a so-so film

By Roger Moore Orlando Sentinel

We know we've lost Bernie Mac. And it takes only about 10 minutes of his next-to-last screen appearance, Soul Men, to show us just what we've lost.

'Role Models': Apatow wannabe falls short

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

Role Models is a scruffy, hit-or-miss comedy in the modern rude-boy style. An R-rated romp with drugs, naked women, kids cussing and a sentimental streak, it's surprising that it's not a Judd Apatow outing. But because it was conceived by and stars Paul Rudd, part of Apatow's inner circle, it might as well be.

'Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa': Much like original

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is more an encore than a sequel. Did you or your kids like the commando penguins, Alex the "jazz hands" lion, Sacha Baron Cohen's impersonation of Peter Sellers, the big-eyed mouse lemur, the cranky little old lady who yells "Bad kitty!" or the Move It Move It song?

Family reviews: 'Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,' 'The Haunting of Molly Hartley'

A parents' guide to select new movies:

'Zack and Miri Make a Porno': Where's the romance?

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

The "it" boy of crude comedy, Seth Rogen, loses some of his comic heat when he teams up with the guy who invented the genre, Kevin Smith, in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It's a raunchy R-rated farce (appealed from an NC-17) in the standard Smith style — comical sex talk with the women just as dirty as the guys, dated pop culture references, a big gross-out moment and an endless litany of oral sex jokes.

'The Haunting of Molly Hartley': Cheap, meek 'gotcha' gimmicks

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

Weak movie comedies often boil down to a simple counting of laughs. For meek horror films, you track the "gotcha" count.

'Changeling': The parent, trapped

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

Angelina Jolie, who won her Oscar by playing mentally ill in Girl, Interrupted, returns to the psych ward for Clint Eastwood's Changeling, a movie he might have titled Motherhood, Interrupted. It's a period piece, a true-crime mystery and a slice of history, vintage Eastwood in many ways. If the film is too long and a little unwieldy in its later acts, the consummate craftsman in Eastwood glosses over that with detail and righteous rage.

'I Served the King of England': Sex, lies and nazis

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

Czech director Jiri Menzel returns to the themes and period of his 1966 classic Closely Watched Trains with his latest, I Served the King of England. It's a charming, picaresque and very sexy dance through the finest hotels and brothels in Czechoslovakia in the Belle Époque, just before World War II.

'Elegy' can’t generate either sexual heat or romantic warmth

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

Movie adaptations of the works of famous authors can serve as a form of literary criticism. That's not to say that one can fairly judge the writing of Philip Roth based on the movies that have been made from his books. But boiling down the books to their most basic, and seeing on screen the lecherous (and now old) men the old semi-autobiographical novelist paired with the cinema's reigning beauties can make the guy, his sexual obsessions and his recent writing seem ridiculous.

Family reviews: 'Saw V,' 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno'

A parents' guide to select new movies:

'RocknRolla': Guy Ritchie delivers, slowly

By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel

How odd is it that it takes Guy Ritchie an hour of screen time to remember how to be Guy Ritchie for his latest gangland-slangland romp, RocknRolla?

Film tour brings movies and their makers to Lexington

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

When Jed Riffe started making movies in the 1970s, he had to shell out $25,000 just for an editing system.